22
THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 6, 2017
BROTHERHOOD OF MAN DEPT.
Q.&A.
A born in Darfur
in . When he was eighteen, after
the government of Sudan intensified its
genocidal campaign, he was driven out of
his home; he ended up in a refugee camp
in Ghana, then was resettled in Kansas
City, Missouri. He moved to Brooklyn
and later earned American citizenship.
During an extended trip back to Sudan,
he met and married his wife, who soon
became pregnant. He left the country be-
fore his son was born and can't a ord a
return trip to meet him. "I think he is an
American citizen, because I am a citizen,
but I'm not sure," Sabor said recently. "I
want to get papers for my wife and bring
them both here. Now President Trump
maybe made that impossible."
Sabor, who works as an Uber driver,
was in a small halal restaurant on Coney
Island Avenue, not far from where he
lives. He wore a black overcoat and a tall
red watch cap. He had come to attend a
meeting of the Darfur People's Associ-
ation, a community group. Days before,
President Trump had signed an execu-
tive order barring residents of seven coun-
tries, including Sudan, from entering the
United States. The order caused wide-
spread confusion. The meeting was for
locals who had questions about how it
a ected them and their families.
Eventually, around two dozen Suda-
nese men showed up and adjourned to
a banquet hall next to the restaurant.The
space was unadorned except for some
half-deflated balloons that read, "It's a
Boy!" ("I hope whoever was in here was
not celebrating the election," someone
said.) Seated on a dais were the presi-
dent of the Darfur People's Association
and three immigration lawyers.
"I'm going to explain the order as best
I can, because it came out very suddenly
and it was very sloppily written," Tarek
Ismail, one of the lawyers, said. "We don't
know if that was an accident or on pur-
pose. The fact is, our President's name is
now Donald Trump, so anything is pos-
sible." Ismail works at the project,
a legal-services clinic at School of
Law. He handed out brochures with the
heading "Know Your Rights: Flying
While Muslim." "They might ask you
your name, which countries you've vis-
ited recently---that's fine, that's normal
airport stu ," he said. "But if they ask you
what your religion is, or what your opin-
ion of Donald Trump is, then that's some-
thing they're not allowed to do. And we're
getting reports that this is already hap-
pening. So if you are ever unsure, just
don't answer, or, if you can, call our o ce
and ask for our help. We're free, by the
way." This drew a small round of ap-
plause. He added, "I should have led with
that, I guess."
A man in the audience raised his hand
and said, "According to CNN, they just
announced they are making exceptions
for people from the seven banned coun-
tries if they have dual residency in Can-
ada, the U.K., places like that."
"That may well be true," Ismail said.
"I haven't checked my phone in about
an hour, so you know better than I do."
At around : . ., the call to prayer
issued from several cell phones in the
room. The meeting ended, and people
gathered near the dais to ask for advice
about their individual situations. Sabor
talked to Lenni Benson, a professor of
immigration law at New York Law
School. "I am a citizen," Sabor said. "My
wife is not. And my son?"
"Unfortunately, it's not a straightfor-
ward yes or no," Benson said. She asked
him a couple of questions: When did he
become a U.S. citizen? When was his
son born? She noted the dates on a yel-
low legal pad, then narrowed her eyes.
of the exchanges, risking the collapse of the individual market.
Having promised to get rid of the insurance mandate, Re-
publicans are considering alternatives, but so far they are all
inadequate. A requirement for people to maintain "contin-
uous coverage"---to take an example supported by the new
Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Price, and
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan---would mean that people
who lose their insurance temporarily, because they, say, change
jobs or su er a financial setback, would also lose their
preëxisting-condition protections. For these people and for
others left behind, Price and Ryan advocate state-run "high-
risk pools." But, in the thirty-five states that o ered high-
risk pools to the uninsurable before the A.C.A., inade-
quate funding delivered terrible coverage, with extremely
high premiums and deductibles, and annual limits as low as
seventy-five thousand dollars. Hardly anyone signed up.
For orthodox Republicans, the central issue is, of course,
taxes. Obamacare increased them, particularly for high-
income individuals and for industries that profit from the
expansion of coverage, to pay for the costs of reform. (The
A.C.A. actually reduces the deficit.) Many Republicans have
made cutting those taxes their top priority; others see pre-
serving coverage as the imperative. Each side thinks the other
is committing political suicide. But, with so many Ameri-
cans beginning to recognize how much they stand to lose,
the political equations are shifting.
Governance is forcing Republicans to confront the real-
ity that repeal without replacement is untenable. In a stale-
mate, Congress would likely need to delay repeal and, to re-
assure skittish insurers, focus on small-scale repairs, such as
a rming that subsidies will continue to be funded, and ei-
ther enforcing the existing mandate or revising it so that
more young and healthy people sign on. (For instance, healthy
people could be charged an extra ten per cent on premiums
if they forgo insurance for a year, the same as the penalty for
elderly people who refuse Medicare Part B.) In addition, the
states that sat out the Medicaid expansion in order to thwart
President Obama would be free to join in under a Republi-
can Administration, as many would like to. "Insurance for
everybody," Trump has vowed. A Trumpcare compromise
could yet bring us a step closer to it.
But legislators have no time to waste. Insurers must decide
by April whether to o er a plan for the exchanges in ,
and at what price. That requires certainty about the future.
Pitchforks have their uses, but crafting health-care policy calls
for more delicate instruments. The basic functioning of the
health-care system is at stake. So are American lives.
---Atul Gawande